Sports

Every year when football season starts, I mourn the end of baseball season. I have always loved baseball, from watching the Cubs when I was little, watching my brothers play little league, and playing in the backyard. Baseball=good.

A few years ago when I started to get to know Erich's family, I had a strong feeling that I would have no choice but to become a football kind of person. I would start to understand the game more and enjoy watching games. Well, football is okay... but it's just not the same. How can I get excited about a new season of football with the sucky Bears when baseball is still going on? Especially this year, with the Cubbies doing so well!

[To clarify, my in-laws are definitely into baseball, and they root for the right team. I have not been pressured into football fanaticism, but I do have to watch a lot of games, which I enjoy, but not like baseball.]

I could go on, but I really don't think I could put it better than the late George Carlin:

Baseball is different from any other sport, very different. For instance, in most sports you score points or goals; in baseball you score runs. In most sports the ball, or the object, is put in play by the offensive team; in baseball the defensive team puts the ball in play, and only the defense is allowed to touch the ball. In fact, in baseball if an offensive player touches the ball intentionally, he's out; sometimes unintentionally, he's out.

Also: in football, basketball, soccer, volleyball, and all sports played with a ball, you score with the ball and in baseball the ball prevents you from scoring.

In most sports the team is run by a coach; in baseball the team is run by a manager. And only in baseball does the manager or coach wear the same clothing the players do. If you'd ever seen John Madden in his Oakland Raiders uniform, you'd know the reason for this custom.

Now, I've mentioned football. Baseball and football are the two most popular spectator sports in this country. And as such, it seems they ought to be able to tell us something about ourselves and our values.

I enjoy comparing baseball and football:

• Baseball is a nineteenth-century pastoral game.
• Football is a twentieth-century technological struggle.

• Baseball is played on a diamond, in a park.The baseball park!
• Football is played on a gridiron, in a stadium, sometimes called Soldier Field or War Memorial Stadium.

• Baseball begins in the spring, the season of new life.
• Football begins in the fall, when everything is dying.

• In football you wear a helmet.
• In baseball you wear a cap.

• Football is concerned with downs - what down is it?
• Baseball is concerned with ups - who's up?

• In football the specialist comes in to kick.
• In baseball the specialist comes in to relieve someone.

• In football you receive a penalty.
• In baseball you make an error. Oops!

• Football has hitting, clipping, spearing, piling on, personal fouls, late hitting and unnecessary roughness.
• Baseball has the sacrifice.

• Football is played in any kind of weather: rain, sleet, snow, hail, mud, can't read the numbers on the field, can't read the yard markers, can't read the players' numbers... The struggle will continue.
• In baseball, if it rains, we don't come out to play.

• Baseball has a seventh inning stretch.
• Football has the two-minute warning.

• Baseball has no time limit: we don't know when it's gonna end - we might have extra innings.
• Football is rigidly timed, and it will end even if we've got to go to sudden death.

• In baseball, during the game, in the stands, there's kind of a picnic feeling; emotions may run high or low, but there's not the much unpleasantness.
• In football, during the game in the stands, you can be sure that at least twenty-seven times you're capable of taking the life of a fellow human being, and preferably a stranger.

And finally, the objectives of the two games are totally different:

• In football the object is for the quarterback, otherwise known as the field general, is to be on target with his aerial assault, riddling the defense by hitting his receivers with deadly accuracy in spite of the blitz, even if he has to use the shotgun. With short bullet passes and long bombs, he marches his troops into enemy territory, balancing this aerial assault with a sustained ground attack which punches holes in the forward wall of the enemy's defensive line.
• In baseball the object is to go home! And to be safe! - I hope I'll be safe at home!

And the YouTube: